


We'll Walk in Good Company

by Muccamukk



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Haldane and Jones Don't Die, Angst, Bittersweet, Christmas, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Homophobia, M/M, Meeting the Parents, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-25
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:33:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,366
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21952252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk
Summary: The winding road to finding acceptance in the post-war world.
Relationships: Andrew A. "Ack-Ack" Haldane/Edward "Hillbilly" Jones
Comments: 16
Kudos: 55
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	We'll Walk in Good Company

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ThrillingDetectiveTales](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/gifts).



> Title from "The Valley" by Jane Siberry.

Eddie's family had moved since he'd signed up, and he had to find the piece of paper with the new address and directions. He'd used to pass through this little town when he'd had that delivery driver job, and knew it well enough to point Andy through the turns.

"This too early?" Andy asked, and Eddie shook his head.

"Ma'll be up with the sun." Indeed, she was already standing on the front porch when Andy's beat up '38 Plymouth pulled up to the curb. She was pale and had her hands to her mouth, trying to hide her expression, but even from outside the gate, Eddie could see the tears in her eyes.

He wanted to run up the steps and sweep her up in his arms, spin her around in the air like he had when she'd come to his graduation, but hours in the car had locked up all the muscles in Eddie's side, and he had to get out carefully, slowly stretching as he went. He heard the driver's side door slam closed, and a moment later Andy had his arm around Eddie's back, holding him steady while he got Eddie's cane out of the back seat.

"I don't need it," Eddie protested.

"Humour me," Andy told him, then in a lower tone, "Incoming."

"Ed! Oh, my boy!" Next thing, Eddie had an armful of Ma, her face pressed into his neck. She was weeping openly, and clinging to Eddie's blouse. Eddie wanted to hold onto her, to return the embrace, but he wasn't steady enough. She'd always been a lean woman, and he was afraid he'd fall forward and take her down with him. Andy's arm around his shoulders held him up, along with Eddie's grip on the roof of the car.

"Ma," he said, but couldn't speak for the lump in his throat past that. It'd been nine years since he'd seen her. Her hair smelled the same. Eddie closed his eyes to keep the tears in, and pressed his nose to her scalp. He didn't know if he believed that he'd survived it all—the years at sea, the battles, the endless hospitals and surgeries—not until he had Ma trying to hug the life out of him and the scent of her hand-made soap in his nose. "I'm home, Ma," he said.

It took a while for them both to stop crying, and Andy stood like a statue for the whole of it. Eddie knew he must be exhausted to the bone from driving through the night, and probably had one of his headaches coming on besides.

"Ma, this is Andy, I mean, this is Captain Haldane," Eddie said. None of them had moved, and he could still feel Andy's arm strong across his back. "He stayed with me, through it all."

Ma finally let go of Eddie, and stepped back. "I declare I don't know who else you'd have brought home, boy." She held out her hand. "I don't know how I can thank you, Captain, for making sure our Ed came home to us."

Andy had to let go of Eddie to take her hand, and Eddie leaned back across the car, looking sideways at Andy to see how he took all this in. Eddie had tried telling him the same, but he knew that Andy didn't see it that way. He didn't see what he'd done for Eddie as something worthy of praise or thanks; it was all the barest duty, certainly not worth kicking up a fuss about.

Andy had stayed by Eddie's side through three different hospitals, months after he himself had been given a medical discharge. Andy had promised Eddie forever, said they'd go back to Methuen and live out the rest of their lives together, and that Eddie would never want for anything again.

"You boys should come inside," Ma said, seeming to remember they were were all embracing in the middle of the street.

Andy was all smiles and courtesy, holding the gate open for Ma, and Eddie limped along behind watching the line of Andy's neck and wondering when he was going to admit how bad his aching head must be.

It was strange to see his own mother—hardly changed save hair gone from grey to white and more lines around her mouth—in a different kitchen than Eddie had spent the first twenty years of his life in. She fussed with making coffee, talking about Eddie's siblings, though none of the news was much fresher than her last letter. The younger ones were in school, the older out of the house.

The coffee made and a tin of cookies produced, they sat around the kitchen table. Eddie kept looking between Andy and Ma, not quite believing that they were in the same room together, and seemed to be talking amiably about the drive up from Virginia. Eddie had never told Ma, not in so many words, but she had to know what Andy was to him. He knew what she looked like when she was being civil to someone she only tolerated, and this wasn't it. Ma seemed to like Andy, or she was at least open to liking him. She'd always been slow to come to a judgment, and unshakable once she'd done so.

Ma waited until Andy had a mouthful of one of her cookies before she asked, "So, Captain, what are your plans?"

Andy's eyes went wide, and he put his hand over his mouth to keep from coughing crumbs across the table. Eddie suppressed a groan. He'd seen Ma ask every one of his sisters' beaus that exact question. Andy chewed and swallowed. "Do you mean for today, ma'am, or after the war generally?"

"Today'll do." Ma sipped her coffee. "For a start."

"That depends on you and Eddie." Andy folded his hands around his own mug and held himself still, watching her reactions. Eddie could see him treading softly as he would with a battalion commander he desperately needed to listen to him. "I don't know how long he wants to stay." Or how long Andy would be welcome, he left implied.

Ma sucked her teeth. She glanced at Eddie with the kind of judgment on her face that she usually reserved for Margaret neglecting to tell her latest boyfriend that the Jones family was Baptist, and that that was non-negotiable. "Has Ed ever told you why he joined the Marines, Captain?"

"Oh, Lord," Eddie muttered. He'd let Andy assume it was because of the Depression. That'd been half the reason. Ma was right though, he should have explained the whole thing.

Andy's eyes lit up. "No, ma'am."

"Well." Ma's voice wasn't filled with relish, as though she were delivering gossip, but she didn't sound ashamed, either, not like this was some dirty family secret she had to divulge now that Andy was in it with them. "I suspected early on that Eddie was peculiar; it runs in the men in my family, they say. Hush, boy, I'll tell it all at once. There never seemed to be any help for it, and he was a good boy, so I made sure his pa didn't notice, and left the rest in the Lord's hands." Eddie sighed. She would have had to put it that way. "Oh, dear, I didn't even think of that. But I don't know if it was the Lord's or the Devil's hand in it, in the end, but when it came down to it, the pastor of our church had a very set idea about whose work it was when he walked in on his son and my Ed in a position that they couldn't seem to explain in Godly words. Though several people told me about it in ungodly ones."

"I never meant you to hear that kind of talk," Eddie broke in, unable to keep silent any more. The whole humiliating encounter was rushing back as though it'd happened the day before, not nine years prior.

Ma snorted. "You oughta been more careful!" She sighed, and took another sip of coffee. Andy was leaning in, listening avidly. "You can imagine the rest, Captain. The pastor hauled them up in front of the whole congregation; the boy said it was all Ed's fault, leading him astray and all, never mind they were the same age, and he was no blushing innocent. His pa supported him, of course."

"And I was lucky I didn't get tarred and feathered when they ran me out of town," Eddie concluded. It'd been a near thing, only stopped by bickering over the tar.

"I'm sorry," Andy said. He reached out and put his hand over Eddie's, squeezing lightly. Eddie took a deep breath and blinked.

"Long time ago," Eddie told him, but he was glad for Andy's words. No one had ever said that what had happened to him was wrong, or that it ought not to have happened. He pulled his hand away anyway, circling his coffee mug. "I'd been thinking on joining up anyhow."

"That was before you moved, Mrs. Jones?" Andy asked, prodding at the implications of Ma's story.

"Not why we moved," Ma answered, "But only twenty miles down the road, and not long enough ago that folks don't remember. It was the best scandal that church had seen in two generations."

Eddie realised he was gripping his mug tight enough to crack it, and made himself relax. His face was flushed with the humiliation of the memory, with the knowledge that this was all Ma's way of explaining that whatever she might want, Eddie's plans ought not include staying here, and in fact never could.

"I understand," Andy told her, voice full of empathy and compassion, like he was telling one of his boys that his buddy was dead, except it was Eddie's whole home county and the neighbouring one besides that'd just bought it. "Will it bring trouble you if we stay the night? Or if I do?"

Eddie's gut clenched in panic. Andy was offering to leave for Eddie's sake. He'd driven through the night to get here, and he desperately needed a rest, and he was offering to leave when nothing—not God or Country—had been able to pry them apart in the hospitals. Eddie knew the way that he was looking at Ma had a little boy's wide-eyed plea to _fix this_ in it. He didn't care.

She smiled at him, and he could see in that look the same heart-breaking pity that had been in her eyes when she'd dropped him at a train station two towns over, with everything he owned in a gunnysack. "You'll need to see the children," Ma said. "Tomorrow's soon enough to be leaving."

Eddie let out a long breath and closed his eyes for a second. How could he have imagined that even near on a decade could have washed his sins clean in the eyes of the people here? He had a first lieutenant's commission and a Bronze Star, but that wouldn't matter. Or maybe it would if he found a girl to marry and never did anything _peculiar_ again, but not if he wanted Andy by his side. And he needed to keep Andy by his side as long as he could. Having left all this out of his account of himself to Andy probably wouldn't do him many favours in that regard.

"Don't know what I was thinking," Eddie said miserably.

"You were thinking you wanted to see your family," Andy told him.

"And I'm glad you were," Ma added. It was like before, out at the car, where they two of them had worked together to hold him up. "I prayed every day that you'd come home to me, Ed, and now at long last you have."

Eddie nodded. The tears in his eyes made the sunlit kitchen shimmer and dance until he felt as though he were looking over the side of a liberty ship to a coral reef below. Water full of sharks, no matter how beautiful it looked. Eddie blinked, then sniffed hard, and the room became itself again: the rickety old table he'd built when he was fourteen, Ma watching him with the compassion of Christ, and Andy still and poised, waiting to see what Eddie needed from him. Eddie had long since learned that if he asked, Andy would give his very blood until his own heart stopped beating. He was careful not to ask for too much.

Even now, Andy was saying, "It's okay, Mrs. Jones. We'll go up to my folks' place in Methuen. They know me there, and there'll be no trouble if we keep our heads down. I have enough pay saved that with our medical pensions we'll be able to take our time looking for work, find something that suits us." He was promising to look after Eddie, like one of his sisters' boys would. Andy was going to find out someday that Eddie wasn't as easily kept as all that, but no point arguing that now.

Ma nodded. "And your people?" she asked.

"Good people," Andy told her, "hard working people." He smiled, eyes lighting like they always did before he kicked over an ant's nest, "Even if we are Presbyterians."

"Well," Ma said after a heart-stopping pause, "the Good Book says that the Lord loves all His children. Even the Presbyterians."

* * *

Eddie finally got Andy to give him a turn behind the wheel about halfway across Massachusetts. They'd been driving for two days, and Eddie could see it wearing Andy down: the fatigue of each day adding onto the last until he was grey-skinned and tight knuckled on the wheel. His chestnut hair had started to grey on New Britain, but Peleliu had turned it the colour or a battleship's hull, and all the hospitals just made him look _old_.

Sometimes, Eddie was afraid that he was the one sucking years off Andy's life, no matter what Andy said. But at least he could drive that last hundred miles to Methuen, and let Andy nap in the passenger seat. Eddie would get some peace that way, too.

Andy'd hardly seemed able to shut up about how much he'd liked Eddie's Ma, and how nice Eddie's brothers and sisters were, and how much he hoped Eddie would like his family. His parents had come to Andy's graduation at Quantico, but he hadn't seen them since. His mother made the best rhubarb pie in the whole state, Andy said, and he'd get her to make one for Eddie, just the right time of year. He was bubbling like a kid before Christmas half the drive up, save when his headaches got to him and made him squint against the road. Those times, Eddie put the radio on soft and low and sang along with the hit parade. They'd driven on, regardless.

Eddie'd tried to tell him that they'd waited this long—that Andy could have gone home months since—so taking a few rest breaks wouldn't hurt anything, but Andy had his head down like a horse who'd caught scent of the barn.

When they got to about the right part of town, Eddie pulled over and took the car out of gear. He looked over at Andy and thought for a long moment about not waking him. He had his jacket folded into a pillow against the window, and his neck bent awkwardly to one side. Men topping six feet were not meant to sleep on a bench seat in a four-door sedan. He looked almost peaceful, though, and Eddie hated to bother him, even if he did need directions to find the Haldane residence.

Right now, Andy was resting, happy in the glow of anticipation of all the good things that might come. The whole world was possible in his eyes, and—saving one or two counties to the south—they could live anywhere or do anything they wanted. America was winning both wars, though still at a terrible cost, and soon the golden cloth of victory would spread at their feet. The just cause Andy had given body and soul to would be completed, and his reward would come.

All that was still possible, as long as Andy slept and they didn't go to his parents house. After that, Eddie suspected, possibilities would become more limited. He stared down at Andy, watching how still his face was, and thought about just turning the car around and driving somewhere, anywhere, it didn't matter.

He turned the engine off. Gas was still rationed, after all. Silence filled the street around them, quiet enough to make the hairs on Eddie's neck stand on end, despite the car in every driveway and the lights on behind most curtains. These people were having dinner, not preparing an ambush. Eddie wished for a rifle.

"Are we there?" Andy asked sleepily, shifting against his jacket.

"Don't know where we're going," Eddie answered. His hand lingered on the key, not wanting to start on the road again. "Thought you might want to tidy up a bit, too."

"Right. Thanks." Andy straightened, rolling first his shoulders then his neck as he did. He rubbed his eyes then ran a hand across his jaw, which was already deep in silver stubble.

"Your Ma ain't gonna care if you shave, Andy," Eddie told him fondly. Andy staying clean shaven for more than ten minutes had always been a lost cause anyway. "Should grow that moustache again."

"She'd love that," Andy said with a groan. "But you're right, as usual. Let's go."

It turned out that Eddie had gotten them within two minutes of the Haldanes. Far too soon, Eddie was turning the ignition off again, and looking sideways at Andy to see how he wanted to play this. He was used to knowing before Andy said a word, sensing what he wanted from the cock of his head or the way his eyes moved. They'd made such a good team because one had always known what the other was thinking.

It still worked. Eddie knew before Andy got out that Andy would ask him to sit this one out. As much as he didn't want to leave Andy for a second, Eddie could admit that he was enough of a coward to not want to be there if this went badly. He'd seen Andy mortally wounded once, and didn't know if he could do it again. So instead of protesting, Eddie watched as Andy buttoned the jacket of his service uniform and straightened his cuffs and collar, before checking his reflection in the side mirror.

"Okay," Andy said. "I'm going to square things with them, then I'll come and get you."

"Okay," Eddie agreed. He watched Andy walk up the path to the front door and go in without knocking, then leaned back as far as he could. The whole bench was already pushed back as far as it would go, but Eddie tried fussing with the levers again. It didn't budge. There wasn't much room to go back anyway, not with their gear in the back seat.

Eddie gave up on the bench and straightened, drumming his fingers on the wheel. His side was starting to ache from sitting so long, and his right foot cramped up. It was the first time he'd driven since Melbourne, he thought, and he didn't remember driving much then. Andy had always wanted to drive. Andy loved being the one behind the wheel.

Andy was in there now, facing his parents alone, telling them what he saw as the truth about himself, telling them like it wasn't something ugly or shameful, but just a part of the whole, like having blue eyes or being brave.

Eddie could never imagine being as brave as Andy. When Andy led, Eddie followed, and that was all there was to it. Following a brave man was as easy as wishing.

Should Eddie have followed Andy inside, even when he'd been told to hold his position?

What in Christ's name could Andy be saying in there that took so long? It wasn't a complicated argument: you could either love your son even though he was peculiar, or you couldn't. Eddie's Ma could, and his Pa had died before Eddie'd had to work out the answer.

Eddie checked his watch. It'd only been five minutes. They probably hadn't even gotten past hello. Goddamn New Englanders took far too long to say anything that mattered.

The front door of the Haldanes opened, then slammed. Eddie leaned across the bench to look out the passenger side, but he didn't have to, not really. Not after Andy had slammed the door of his father's house. His stride confirmed it: arms stiff, iron rod up his ass, double time towards the car. If he'd had a rifle, it'd be shouldered for parade. Andy turned smartly coming off the walk. Eddie bet his head was pounding so hard it was about to fall off, but you couldn't see an inch of hurt in Andy, not a fault in that United States Marine Corps armour.

Eddie pushed the passenger door open for him and leaned back to his side. Andy got in, slammed the car door, too. Eddie turned the key, swore softly as the starter coughed, but it turned over in the end. He didn't need Andy to tell him to drive.

He hadn't been able to bring himself to look at Andy's face yet. Eddie figured he'd give Andy a few blocks to pull himself together. He found his way back to the place they'd pulled over before, but left the car running this time. He took a deep breath, then turned.

Andy's face could have been carved of marble—a stern, smooth face, like the bust of an especially ferocious general, the figurehead of a destroyer, the God of War. Eddie wet his lips, trying to imagine what a man could say in the face of that. Andy would know. It was just too bad that Andy was the one who needed to hear it right now.

Moving in a rush, Andy leaned across the seat and kissed Eddie fiercely on the mouth. It was over so quickly that Eddie would have doubted it'd happened at all, except Andy's kisses always left his lips buzzing. Andy fell back to his seat and stared straight ahead. His hands were clenched at his sides, and every muscle in his body screamed with the kind of fury that could only cover grief.

"Where to, Skipper?" Eddie asked.

"It—" Andy coughed and shook his head a little. "It doesn't matter. Away form here."

"Okay," Eddie said. He put the car in gear and headed out of town. He supposed it really didn't matter for now. They'd head back down towards Boston and find somewhere to hole up for the night. After that, they could work out what to do.

Night had fallen and the lights of Methuen were behind them before Andy said another word. His voice cracked when he spoke. "They told me I had to give you up."

"I'm sorry," Eddie said, because he couldn't think what else to say.

"I told them to go to hell."

Andy fell silent again, after that. Eddie wondered if Andy would weep, either now or when they were curled up in bed together, but he didn't expect he would. They'd both seen hell in the jungles and on the blasted coral hills of the Pacific, and Andy had wished that suffering on his own blood, but eternally. No, Andy wouldn't shed a tear for them, not yet.

If he ever did, Eddie promised himself he'd be there to hold him.

* * *

New York was throwing itself into Christmas of 1945 like America had never been at war at all. Everything that didn't have legs to run was draped in tinsel, and Eddie had been unconsciously humming "Jingle Bells" under his breath for a solid week. He was trying to learn "The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" on the guitar to counteract it, but all that'd done was make Andy laugh.

That was something, at least. Andy's laughs were still a rare thing in this grim New York winter. Eddie hadn't missed winters when he'd been serving, no matter how many of the other guys moaned about wanting it to snow. In the opinion of a Southern man, even one from just shy of the Mason Dixie, snow was for the birds.

However, the shops here were open all hours selling anything a soul could want, and Eddie had found some sugared plums. He was going to give them to Andy and ask him to dance, see if he could make him laugh again.

Whistling the chorus of "Jingle Bells," Eddie trudged the two flights up to their apartment. His wish list for the next year—once Andy got that promotion at the bank—definitely included an apartment building with an elevator, but that could keep. This place was bright and clean, big enough to host small parties with similar-minded friends. Even the stairs weren't too hard to negotiate as long as Eddie remembered at the start of the day that he'd need his cane by the end.

He'd remembered that day, and had the last of his Christmas shopping tucked under one arm and still had the breath to whistle and jingle his keys in time. Maybe he was getting better after all, if terribly slowly.

When Eddie got in, Andy was sitting in the easy chair, staring at a paper-wrapped box on the coffeetable like he had every expectation that it would explode. He startled when Eddie closed the door behind him, looking around with that full-body turn that always seemed to come with a thousand-yard stare.

All thoughts of dancing forgotten, Eddie dropped his packages and let his cane fall against the wall, his coat and scarf falling softly beside it. It wasn't a big enough place to take him much to get across, but Andy was already rising by the time Eddie got to his chair.

"Hey," Eddie said, and kissed Andy. He did it slowly and thoroughly, trying to remind Andy why he was still there, when he could just say a word and be back in the life he'd had before the war. Andy's hands came up and rested on Eddie's hips. He didn't pull their bodies together, but the promise of what they could have later was there in the splay of his fingers over Eddie's belt.

"Hey yourself," Andy replied when Eddie finally broke the kiss. He glanced back at the coffee table and tried to smile. "I picked up the mail."

"So I see," Eddie said. Last mail they'd gotten had been a package from Ma the size and weight of a brick, which had turned out to be a block of her hundred-proof fruitcake and a Christmas card Eddie's littlest brother had made. Andy had framed that card. This box was about the size of a file box at the foundation where Eddie was clerking, and must have cost a fortune to post. It had a Massachusetts postmark. "Want me to throw it out the window for you, Skip?"

Andy snorted, and his smile looked a little more real this time. "Better not. Or, not yet."

"Want to open it?"

"No." Andy let his head fall against Eddie's shoulder, and Eddie braced himself on the back of the chair so he could take both their weight. He ran his hands up and down Andy's back. His body was starting to thicken with inactivity, and Eddie couldn't think of a thing that pleased him more.

"Want me to open it for you?" Eddie asked. "Or," he added hastily, "we can stick it in a closet and not look at it until next time we move."

"I like throwing it out the window better."

"Anything against it?"

Andy's hands tightened on his hips. "It's just that I'd wonder. It's been eight months. Maybe..."

Maybe Andy's parents had forgiven him for being peculiar. Eddie had seen this too many times, especially on New Britain. It wasn't the relentless grind of combat or even the weather that broke men, it was imaging they had some fashion of hope, just the smallest spark, only for the Marine Corps, or the jungle, or the Japanese to snatch it away.

"I'll open it for you," Eddie said. Better to get it over with. He expected an argument, but Andy just nodded against his shoulder and let out a sigh of relief.

"Okay."

He let Andy slump back into the chair and knelt next to the box. His pocketknife made quick work of the paper as well as the tape underneath, and he pulled the flaps open before he had to hesitate. Eddie glanced at Andy before he dug in, but he was staring fixedly ahead again. No help there.

Half the box was books, mostly year books, the rest was various papers: Andy's diplomas, a folder of newspaper clippings about his football career, vaccination records, and, finally, at the very bottom, his birth certificate.

Eddie felt his throat tighten, but with rage not grief. He carefully pulled every last document out of the box, sifting through the paperwork and mementos that made up a life. They'd cleared out Andy's room and sent everything away. They hadn't even asked him what he wanted them to do. Of course they hadn't. He wasn't their son any more.

Eddie really should just have thrown the damn box out of the window. There would have been some satisfaction in watching the gale off the Hudson catch the papers and melt them into sleet. But this was Andy's life, too. Eddie wasn't the one who wanted to throw it away. Now, he had to make sure that Andy wasn't either.

At the very bottom of the box, under the birth certificate, lay a single piece of card stock. Eddie flipped it open without taking it out of the box. The handwriting was the same as the address. It carried a single line of text: "I'm praying for you."

"No, you ain't," Eddie muttered, apparently loud enough to make Andy blink and seem to come awake again. Eddie knew what praying for Andy was like. He'd done it through the whole war, he did it still, with all his body, mind, heart, and soul. Whatever Andy's parents thought they were doing, it wasn't praying for their son.

"That it?" Andy asked.

Eddie crumpled the note and palmed it up his sleeve. "Looks like."

"Guess this is good to have," Andy said. He wasn't even trying to smile any more. Eddie didn't blame him. "I'll file it all later." From the way he hesitated before the last word, Eddie suspected it would be much, much later before Andy had the stomach to deal with any of this.

"Nah, I'll do it," Eddie said, like it would be the easiest thing in the world. He jammed the note into his pocket as he rose, and pulled Andy to his feet as well.

They stood for a moment with their hands linked between them, and then Eddie let go and limped back towards his dropped packages. "Hold on, a minute, Andy. I just about forgot this in all the fuss."

Eddie had to brace himself on the wall to bend, but he soon came up with the candied plums. "Saw these, and thought of you."

Andy approached him with a set expression like he knew he was about to be jollied along, and didn't approve, but was too exhausted hold a front against Eddie's nonsense. Eddie forced a grin and held out the waxed-paper bag.

It took a moment for it to sink in. Andy peered into the bag, took one of the plums out and held it up. Then, as Eddie had hoped, he smiled. It was a thin, gallows humour kind of smile, but Eddie would take it.

He held out his arms to Andy and said, "Want to dance, Skipper?"

"Yeah, I do," Andy answered, and stepped into Eddie's embrace.


End file.
